Head judge guide: running judging on show day

Sign in on your phone. If Head Judge is your only role in Car Show Expert (you don't organise shows yourself), you land on your Assignments page — every show you've been assigned to, with an amber banner and a Begin scoring shortcut for whichever show has judging open right now.

Tap the show's name to open its full page — that's where the judging floor controls in the rest of this guide live, on the show's Judging tab.

Every class starts Closed — a judge can't score a car in a closed class, even if it's checked in and sitting right in front of them. Open the show's Judging tab on your phone and look for the Class Judging Status card. If any classes are still closed once judging is otherwise underway, an amber banner sits above it with its own Open all classes button, so you can't miss it.

Tap the Closed pill next to a class to flip it straight to a green Open pill — no save button, no confirmation. Use Open all in the card header to flip every class at once, or Close all to shut judging down everywhere in one tap (it asks you to confirm first, since it stops every judge mid-show). Do this class by class right before judging actually starts — leaving classes closed until the last minute stops cars getting scored before you're ready.

Open the show's Judge Results tab. The Judging Progress card breaks scoring down class by class — a Done or In progress pill, a progress bar for entries scored, and one chip per assigned judge with a checkmark or a clock and their own scored count. Cars with no class assigned show up in their own Unclassified bucket.

Don't rely on walking the field and asking around to find out who's behind — this card tells you directly, judge by judge, so you know exactly who to go find.

Below the progress card, the per-judge score breakdown shows every car scored so far, category by category, across all judges — useful for catching an outlier score before anything is finalized. A regular judge never sees this view; only Head Judges and organisers can.

As Head Judge you also score cars directly, the same way every other judge does — enter a car number or scan its QR code, tap through each category, and save. See the Judge Guide for the full scoring walkthrough; the screen is identical whichever role opens it.

Once every class shows Done on the Judging Progress card, you're finished — hand off to the organiser to publish awards from the Awards tab (that step is organiser-only). If you set an Auto-close judging at time earlier, judging locks itself at that moment automatically; judges see a countdown warning in their own scoring screen during the last 30 minutes. Otherwise, use Close all on the Class Judging Status card to lock scoring the moment you're satisfied every car has been seen.